On Tuesday myself and two friends went to a concert. We left work at six o’clock and drove south to the coast, following a small road hemmed in on one side by the sea and on the other by the Étang du Prévost. Our destination was the Cathédrale de Maguelone, an ancient church occasionally referred to as the Mont St Michel of the south due to its waterbound situation. Every summer it plays host to a festival of ancient music. The concert we attended was dedicated to English composers of the Renaissance era — most prominently William Byrd, his 400th anniversary having passed just last year.

Before the concert, we picnicked on the shore of the étang. This word is usually translated as pond, but it carries a connotation of stagnant water. In English we’d probably call it a lagoon (although the word lagune also exists in French). The étangs of the Occitan coast are deep, briny pools, mostly notably inhabited by flamingos.

We shared a cherry cake for dessert, the salt from the lagoon thick in the air. Everything felt damp. The deep blue sky, crusted and oxidised by the sharpening sunset, made no reflection in the murky surface of the water, which sucked and tongued at the rocks round our feet in a half-hearted way. Every so often, some distance away, large fish would leap out into the air, presumably seeking respite from the cloying funk of the water. We speculated amongst ourselves that the next leap of the fish would be followed by something more spectacular; pursuit by a crocodile, or perhaps a killer whale. World is crazier and more of it than we think.

No such excitements making themselves known, we amused ourselves, childlike, by spitting the cherry stones from the cake out into the pond. I was struck in that moment by a line of poetry — one of Louis MacNeice’s, which has been on my mind for years: “I…spit the pips and feel/ the drunkenness of things being various.”.

For the whole evening, on the drive down to the sea, through French suburbia and the fringes of countryside, all touched and painted gold in the early evening light, I had been thinking that things aren’t so bad, for me, right now. In my weaker moments, I tend to see my whole postdoc career so far as one long, difficult and perhaps pointless struggle — but I’m trying to do better than that.

I was brought sharply to my senses recently by a friend telling me he thought I’d been “in a dark place” lately — and here was I thinking I’d been all moody and mysterious about it. In reality, I’m rather glad of having people close enough to notice that kind of thing; and in the car, on the way to the sea, and later, sitting on damp grass hocking pits into the pond, I was able to enjoy that thought for longer than usual.

After all the build-up, the concert was the anti-climax of the evening. The cathedral is a misnomer; in stature and decoration it’s more akin to a tumbledown parish church than St Paul’s. The performers were Voces Suaves, in SAATB formation, with an accompanist who played the lute and theorbo. It could be my untrained ear when it comes to Renaissance music, but I found the programme repetitive, and the different pieces difficult to distinguish or separate in my memory afterwards.

I did however appreciate the chance to see and hear some historically informed singing technique up close, though I have no great urge to do so again in the near future. The accompanist was, however, very good, and I wished he’d had more to do than the three solos (one his own composition) which the programme afforded him.

The performance aside, the concert was a delight. The sun had set by the time it started, and from my seat I could see across the face of the stage to an open door in the side of the church. As the music wound on, the opening to the outside world grew grey, and then blue, and then black, the silhouette of the trees outside fading away into nothing. Every so often, between the songs, the cry of a peacock could be heard from the cathedral grounds. I was filled up with a sense of mysticism, and the feeling that if I turned my head to the left or to the right, I wouldn’t see people in modern clothes, but rather fellow mediaeval concert-goers, dancing to, or perhaps just listening to the music, looking out into a darkening world and dreaming of the future.

The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was
Spawning snow and pink roses against it
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:
World is suddener than we fancy it.

World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.

And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world
Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes—
On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one’s hands—
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.

Louis MacNeice